Kaija Saariaho’s latest opera, first seen at the 2021 Festival d’Aix en Provence, has now reached another of its co-commissioners, the Royal Opera House. It would be difficult to overstate…
Tag: Royal Opera House
A superb Yonghoon Lee heads a magnificent cast at Covent Garden in Antonio Pappano’s first Turandot
Is Turandot the last great Italian opera of the twentieth century? It’s a common and widely written viewpoint – indeed, William Ashbrook and Harold Powers called it ‘the end of…
Rusalka at the Royal Opera House
A strange evening: I very much enjoyed this new Rusalka, though found myself slightly haunted by the suspicion I did so more than I should have done. Musically magnificent yet…
Das Rheingold at English National Opera
Like the Biblical cosmos, that of the Ring offers more than one creation myth, perhaps not entirely consistent with one another. Therein lies the dramatic rub. Richard Jones’s new production…
Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House
‘R. slept well and has decided to have a massage only once a day,’ writes Cosima Wagner in one of her last diary entries, from Venice, only twenty days before…
McVicar’s The Magic Flute returns to the Royal Opera House
David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute is well on its way to its 20th anniversary (the production debuted in 2003). The current revival (seen 19 December 2022) is…
The Rape of Lucretia at the Royal Opera House
This new Rape of Lucretia, seen first at Snape, now in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre, fittingly features singers from two young artists’ programmes: Britten Pears and Jette…
Richard Jones brings a wry twist to Alcina’s magic powers at the Royal Opera House
‘The Only Path’. So reads the insignia emblazoned on the drop curtain, as the overture to Alcina strikes up in the Royal Opera House pit at the start of Richard…
The Rape of Lucretia at Snape Maltings
The myth of Lucretia, first told by Livy, tells of the rape of Collatinus’s eponymous wife by his fellow soldier, Tarquinius, the son of the Etruscan king who rules over…
In conversation with Mary Bevan
Operas sometimes seem like the proverbial London bus: you wait at the stop for ages and then three come along at once. This year, the bus’s destination has been Alcina’s…